SEES MIRAGE IN STRAITS
Officers of Tug Goliah Witness Remarkable Phenomena.
"The horizon seemed scarcely a mile away and the mountains seemed to hang from the clouds. The Olympics were apparently lifted a thousand feet in the air, while Smith island appeared at intervals in the clouds. The vessels in the picture were inverted and seemed sailing in a sea of clouds. The phenomenon was first noticed about noon and it lasted until about 2 o'clock."
"Such mirages are not infrequent in the North Pacific and many travelers along the Alaskan coast have reported witnessing similar conditions in the Far North."
This amazing form of mirage is called a Fata Morgana is not all that common in our corner of the world.
The Goliah, the tugboat mentioned in this article, was legendary. Gordon Newell devoted an entire chapter to this deepwater steam tug in his book, Pacific Tugboats. Built by John Dialogue of Camden, N.J. in 1907, the Goliah was towed by a sister tug, the Hercules, to San Francisco. Goliah was purchased by the Puget Sound Tug Boat Company in 1909. During the tug's short stay in Washington State, it was involved in several exciting rescue missions as outlined by Newell. During World War I the tug was bought by the U.S. Navy where it had a supporting role in rescue and salvage in Europe. The Goliah spent its final decades owned by the Wood Towing Company of Norfolk, Va. It was scrapped in 1952, but its sister ship, the Hercules, still operates to this day under the status of a National Historic Landmark in the Bay Area.
A history of Irondale's place in the Northwest steel industry can be found in Diane F. Britton's The Iron and Steel Industry in the Far West : Irondale, Washington (1991).
Irondale has also recently been the subject of interest from the Washington State Dept. of Ecology. These publications have been digitized by the Washington State Library and can be viewed online.
